The head of GCHQ wants a 'new relationship' with tech companies

The head of GCHQ is striking a conciliatory tone, calling for a
"new relationship" between tech companies and the UK government,
The Telegraph reports, as debate rages over privacy,
security, and encryption.

Speaking at MIT, Robert Hannigan said "we should be bridging the
divide, sharing ideas and building a constructive dialogue in a
less highly-charged atmosphere." He calls for a "a new forum to
facilitate this," and said that the Prime Minister will be
providing more details on how he intends to achieve this in the
"coming months."

Hannigan's speech is much less inflammatory than his
previous remarks on cybersecurity.

Shortly after he became director of GCHQ in November 2014, he
wrote
a column for The Financial Times in which he said that US
tech companies' platforms have "become the command-and-control
networks of choice for terrorists and criminals."

Hannigan's new speech comes at a time of unprecedented public
debate over security in the digital age. In the US, the FBI is
using the courts to try and force Apple help it break into an
encrypted iPhone that was owned by a terrorist, with Apple
countering that building the software necessary would be too
dangerous.

And in the UK, the Investigatory Powers Bill is making its way
through Parliament. It's the Conservative government's flagship
new proposed spying law, that will for the first time lay a clear
legal framework for spooks' activities in the digital age.

But it's also proving highly divisive: An earlier draft was
heavily criticised by three Parliamentary committees, with one
calling the bill at times "inconsistent and largely
incomprehensible."

One key concern is encryption. Privacy advocates are worried that
provisions in the Investigatory Powers Bill may require to weaken
their encryption or otherwise introduce backdoors for law
enforcement access. Hannigan denied this is the case. "I am not
in favour of banning encryption. Nor am I asking for mandatory
backdoors," he said. "I am puzzled by the caricatures in the
current debate, where almost every attempt to tackle the misuse
of encryption by criminals and terrorists is seen as a
'backdoor.' It is an over-used metaphor, or at least mis-applied
in many cases, and I think it illustrates the confusion of the
ethical debate in what is a highly-charged and technically
complex area."

We recognise that we need a new relationship between the tech
sector, academia, civil society and Government agencies."

I’ve no doubt that we will need a new forum to facilitate this,
bringing together the tech industry, Government agencies,
academia and civil society. A space where we can build
confidence, have a frank dialogue and work out how we can best
tackle the problems we all recognise within the law.

For our part we’re fully committed to a collaborative approach
and want to support this actively. The Prime Minister will be
setting out further details in the coming months on how the UK
Government plans to facilitate this dialogue.